West Bengal: Police arrest members of independent fact-finding team on way to Sandeshkhali

The West Bengal Police on Sunday arrested and later released six members of an independent fact-finding committee who were going to Sandeshkhali, The Indian Express reported.

The committee is led by L Narasimha Reddy, the former chief justice of the Patna High Court.

The Sandeshkhali village in the North 24 Parganas district has been at the centre of a political row for nearly a month. There have been protests by women in the village alleging sexual assault and land grabbing by Trinamool Congress leader Shahjahan Sheikh.

Prohibitory orders have been imposed in the village under Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

On Sunday, senior police officers stopped the convoy of the independent fact-finding team 52 kms from the village.

Reddy, accompanied by former Indian Police Service officer Raj Pal Singh, former National Commission for Women member Charu Wali Khanna, advocates OP Vyas and Bhavna Bajaj, and journalist Sanjeev Nayak tried to defy the police and go to the village.

Following this, the group was detained and taken to the Kolkata Police headquarters, before being released.

“This is completely illegal,” PTI quoted Reddy as saying. “We have told the police personnel [that] as law-abiding citizens, we will not break rules. No curfew has been imposed in Sandeshkhali. So we can go in two groups.”

He added: “At least two of our women members should be allowed to visit the females who had borne the brunt of atrocities of musclemen enjoying political patronage and impunity from police action in all these days till the media unravelled the shocking truth.”

Saikat Ghosh, Deputy Commissioner, Bhangar Division, Kolkata Police told The Indian Express that the police requested the group not to go to Sandeshkhali “but they were trying to break the police barricade unlawfully”.

“So, we had to arrest them under preventive sections,” Ghosh said. “If there is information of a ‘breach of peace’, the police can arrest them under preventive sections.”

The independent committee was stopped from visiting Sandeshkhali even as a Trinamool Congress delegation, including West Bengal ministers Partha Bhowmick and Sujit Bose, visited the village on Sunday, PTI reported. The party delegation visited the village for the second consecutive day to hear the villagers’ grievances.

“Give us one-and-a-half months,” Bhowmik, the state irrigation minister, told villagers, according to PTI. “We have promised that all the land grab incidents which had been reported will be verified. We cannot solve all the problems in one go. To address the issues, there are official procedures that need time to be completed.”

Allegations against TMC leader

Sheikh has been absconding since January 5, when officials of the Enforcement Directorate were assaulted in Sandeshkhali as they carried out raids in connection with an alleged ration distribution scam. A mob allegedly attacked the Enforcement Directorate officials with stones, bricks and batons when they arrived to raid the Trinamool leader’s home.

Following this, several local women accused Sheikh and his associates of torturing and sexually harassing them over several years, and also of grabbing their lands for prawn cultivation.

On February 8, women held protests demanding that Sheikh and two of his associates, Shiba Prasad Hazra and Uttam Sardar, be immediately arrested. They have alleged that Sheikh and his associates used to survey homes to look for young women, whom they would take to the party office and sexually assault.

A day later, the protesting women burnt down three poultry farms owned by Hazra, which they claimed were built on land forcibly grabbed from the locals.

On Saturday, protests against the alleged land grabbing by Sheikh and his brother Sheikh Sirajuddin spread to the Majherpara and Halderpara localities of Sandeshkhali. Some protestors also chased the family members of a local party leader in Halderpara, alleging that they had grabbed villagers’ land and given them to Sirajuddin.